


This is My Body and Soul

by AliceinSpace



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: David is a rat bastard, Ellie is a badass, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, set in the winter portion of the game, soul colors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 12:56:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21137054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceinSpace/pseuds/AliceinSpace
Summary: She jerks and suddenly she’s back in the house that is their temporary refuge, but David’s soul is still there, she can feel it.  In the dim moonlight from the window behind her, Ellie sees them: dark bruises the color of his ugly soul spread about her neck like a noose.A re-telling of WINTER in a world where your soul has its own unique color that can spread to others through skin-to-skin contact.





	This is My Body and Soul

She startles awake in the middle of the cold night to even colder fingers clamped on her hand.

She doesn’t call out (she hasn’t done that in years) but immediately scans her surroundings for the danger that woke _him_. She hears only the wind outside. No footsteps on the floors above, no creaks in the house, no whispers or gunfire beyond. She sees nothing except the form on the mattress beside her.

“Joel?” she asks the darkness, panicked.

Joel’s grip on her loosens, and she sits up now, leaning over him. Terrified.

He’s still breathing. Asleep as ever but breathing steadily.

The air leaves Ellie and is replaced by an odd mixture of relief and disappointment. His hand remains on hers, lightly now, not holding her, simply there. It is a comforting weight.

It is also the longest they have touched each other.

Ellie has seen the color of Joel’s soul before, knows it in an abstract way. But those times, they were quick glimpses of it on a runner that snuck past his gun or down a wall when he was hurt and losing control. He has touched her before, hands on shoulder and wrist during a rushed lesson on how to hold a rifle, hand on a leg when she teeters on a floating scrap of wood, but he is always careful not to allow skin-to-skin contact. When Tess was telling them a horrible truth, when he reached for her bare arm, he pulled back even before she snapped at him.

Ellie wants to see his soul color for real.

Moving as little as possible, she pulls her flashlight from her pack and clicks it on.

Her palms rests heavily on Joel’s chest, warm and guarding his fighting heart, reassuring her of his life as she fell asleep. Joel’s hand covers hers and she can just make out the color it has pressed onto her skin.

A plain golden-brown. Warm and safe. A comforting color, even if she can't say why.

But she stares too long.

His breath a wispy cloud from his pale lips, Joel releases a hacking cough and his soul stutters, jumping and splattering itself farther across her skin. Like blood sprayed on a wall.

Ellie jerks her hand away without worrying if it wakes him. (He slumbers on, fighting the infection in his belly.) She stares at her newly-colored skin. The handprint there, misshapen and messy and awful, reminds her of the children’s drawings in the underground community they passed through with Henry and Sam.

It takes her a moment to realize that a tear has started down her cheek.

She wipes it away, furious, and turns off her flashlight. Cradling her soul-stained hand to her chest, she curls onto her side next to Joel. She doesn’t want to take any more of his soul in case he needs it somehow (a foolish notion, she knows), so she does not reach out for him now.

“We need more food,” she says instead. “I’ll go hunting in the morning and… I’ll, I’ll check the houses again. Somebody’s got to’ve left _something_ that will help you.”

She lays there for a long time, listening to him breathe.

“You’re gonna make it,” she tells him in a soft voice.

“You have heart. You’re loyal.” David steps closer as the words drop from his mouth.

Ellie forces her lungs to work slowly, steadily, despite her thundering heart. Her hands burn where they lay on the cold metal bars of her cage.

He is so close Ellie can smell him again, better than in the open air of the woods, and she wishes she couldn’t. He reeks of death and rot. “And you’re special,” he whispers.

This is it. This may be her only chance. Her eyes hold his determinedly, refusing to glance down at the keys at his waist. Ellie does not move as David curls a hand around hers. He is hungry, and not just in one way. It takes all of her resolution to let him touch her so. She doesn’t look down, can’t look at the color he’s marking her with.

“Oh,” she says.

It takes more than she knew she had to lay her free hand atop his.

They stare deeply into each other for the space of a single breath.

Then Ellie moves. One quick turn and she snaps his finger. His scream shatters the snowy quiet and Ellie latches onto him, pulling him into the bars and reaching for the keys.

She almost gets them too, that’s the worst part.

But David recovers fast and it is Ellie’s turn to slam painfully into the bars. One, two, three times and she has to let go. She stumbles and falls – “oh, fuck…” she gasps – as David howls and curses her.

“You are making it very difficult to keep you alive,” he snarls. “What am I supposed to tell the others now?”

Ellie is mesmerized by the hand he nurses: swelling and bruising already, the pale yellow of her soul practically glowing in the dim basement. “Ellie.”

“What?” David faces her.

"Tell them that… Ellie is the little girl that,” – her voice climbs to a venomous shout – “broke your fucking finger!”

He stares her down, but her ears are ringing, her nose is bleeding, her heart is hammering firmly away, there isn’t room in her for anything besides rage and will.

“How did you put it? Hmm? Tiny pieces?” His lips curl up wickedly and he hums. “See you in the morning, Ellie.”

When he is gone, she presses the back of her hand to her dripping nose. With a slight delay, she remembers, drops that hand, and raises the other to the light.

The skin across the back of this hand is painted with David’s soul.

Her stomach turns in the most sickening way because his soul is brown, a brown very similar to Joel’s.

Desperate, she twists and turns her hand, as if hoping it will change if she just moves it.

She is right.

What at first glance is brown and honest is as deceptive as its human. It is actually a motley brown-green-black, like the bottom of a lake, deeper than you thought but it’s too late now you’re already drowning.

She’s so stupid.

In the corner of her cement and metal cage, she makes herself as small as possible and wipes hopelessly at her hand. But soul-colors must fade on their own, they cannot be wiped out. She cries silently as she concentrates, thinning the skin of one palm so that her pale yellow shines through, and rubs it futilely across the ugly stains. You can’t color yourself either.

When she gives up, she stares at the hand as it lays on the floor beside her like a repentant traitor. The same hand that, one short day before, had been painted with a comforting and beautiful golden-brown.

She doesn’t know if she will ever see that color again.

His voice echoes in the smoke and the haze as his foot connects with her gut.

_ It’s okay to give up–_

_ – no shame in it–_

_ give up–_

_ Ellie–_

_ – not your style–_

She’s almost to the knife but then his body drops, he is straddling her, the little air in her is squeezed out by his weight. His hand clamps down on the back of her neck. She is screaming but she can’t hear anything over his grating voice as he shoves her onto her back. She can’t remember how to breathe, she’s fighting him, reaching for the knife but his hands are crushing her, she knows his soul is marking her, defiling her, surely it’s seeping even through her clothes. She can’t die like this, she–

She jerks and suddenly she’s back in the house that is their temporary refuge, but David’s soul is still there, she can feel it.

Her hands cupped around her own throat, she flings herself from the bed and flies to the bathroom down the hall. Joel might call out to her, but she doesn’t stop, she has to know, has to see. She barrels into the bathroom and stands gasping before the cracked mirror.

In the dim moonlight from the window behind her, Ellie sees them.

Dark bruises the color of his ugly soul spread about her neck like a noose.

She’s panicking, she’s hyperventilating, she’s forgotten what breathing feels like. She can’t look away from the mirror.

A shadow moves in the doorway and Joel’s voice approaches cautiously, as if she were a wounded animal. “Ellie. You’re safe. It’s me.”

Her eyes are on him now. “Joel! It’s here!” she cries, covering her throat again with both hands. The bruises protest but she ignores the pain. “His soul, his filthy fucking soul, I–”

Joel steps to her, slow and steady, shushing her. He’s before her and he opens his arms – why, she doesn’t know because she tilts forward and her legs give out on her. Joel catches her easily, lowering them both to the crumbling tiles. She releases herself and clings to Joel like a drowning victim to a life preserver. (she is drowning.) With the ease of a father, he keeps one arm circled around her and lays his other hand atop her head, holding her firmly to his chest.

“He’s still here, Joel,” she whimpers quietly into his shirt. “His soul…”

“Let me see.”

She doesn’t move.

“Look at me, Ellie.” His voice will not be ignored but it is kind.

So she lifts her head and meets his eyes.

“Where?”

Wordlessly – there aren’t any words left in her – Ellie touches quivering fingertips to the hollow at the base of her throat.

Joel rocks back, dropping from a squat to sit with her. He offers his own hands, large and calloused.

For a single moment, Ellie does not understand. Then she realizes what is happening and she can’t breathe all over again. She takes his hands and, closing her eyes, places them exactly where David had gripped her. Where he meant to take her life.

Joel means to save her.

“Here?” His hands are warm and careful, gently holding her neck and jaw until she imagines she can feel his soul on her skin. “There’s nothing there, kid. Just you and me.”

She opens her eyes. He nods, and she stands. Her reflection lifts its hands and touches the soul-color poured carefully into her skin, covering the bruises and the fear and the imaginary stains.

Golden-brown. Handprints the color of protection and life and _home_. Cupping her neck and holding her head high.

She can breathe now.

She returns to his arms on the bathroom floor and he rocks them both, his rough voice stumbling through song after song. At the end of each one, he whispers, “You’re all right, baby girl.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Blame" by Bastille.
> 
> This is how I'm coping with the wait for Part II. Anyone else just want to go absolutely feral?


End file.
